[Note: Due to concerns others have raised in the past about certain words
 resulting in these lists attracting non-NetBSD users here to ask non-NetBSD
 questsions, I am using some circumlocutions to avoid naming certain compa-
 nies and products.  It should be obvious what I really mean.]

If you're not interested in emulating PCs (or emulating a certain OS), you
can probably skip this message.

I was wondering if anyone has played a whole lot with PC emulation on NetBSD.
I "need" to run a certain MonopolySoft company's OS some (at least) of the time.
One option is to keep a presently-installed 32MB PII.  But it swaps a lot
even just starting up CygWIN's BASH (it is quite painful to watch).  Another
option is to swap the hard drive with a "bigger" box currently running NetBSD
(I'm thinking that a 128MB Athlon might be enough for BillOS), but I would kind
of like to avoid that.

I was hoping to set up a virtual PC and installing the 1998 edition of
MonopolySoft's OS on that  Alternatively, emulating the OS itself might work
(though see below for PEACE, etc.).


The options that I see:

 * Commercial vmware (or whatever).  Probably would have to run on
   the Athlon.  Should be fast.  Costs money, and has on-again,
   off-again problems as they use the latest GNU/LINUX kernel features.
   For the cost of a license, plus the hassle, I might as well pick up a
   low end PC.  (I have never actually used vmware, but have seen complaints
   from time to time about new versions breaking.  I do not know if the
   current version works with NetBSD or if it is once more in broken mode.)

 * bochs from pkgsrc.  I've started to play with it, but am running into
   problems getting it to read a CD (real or image file).

   I have this installed now.

 * plex86 from pkgsrc.  Removed from pkgsrc?  I just have a CVS dir, now.

   I don't have this installed.  I don't remember if I ever did.

 * pcemu from pkgsrc.  Doesn't build for me.  If it is technically a great
   emulator with rave reviews, I might make it a priority to build this
   one.  But the comiler errors led me to some rather ugly code, so I'm
   not all that enthused about this one.

   Never tried.  Hard to install if it won't build.  (^&

 * dosbox from pkgsrc.  Only claims to emulate a "realmode CPU".  I
   vaguely recall that that would rule out running anything interesting
   to me.

   Never tried.  Looks like it won't work for my needs.

 * doscmd from pkgsrc.  I think that this would completely fail to run
   the OS/application(s) that I require.  (^&

   Never tried.

 * peace from pkgsrc.  I never got this to do anything useful,
   and would need to be able to run software installation kits.
   (Aside, I've always thought that this was a cool idea since I
   learned about it.)

   I haven't tried this in perhaps a year.

 * wine from pgksrc.  Had the same problems as peace, without the
   coolness aspect.  Still, if it would work well enough...

   Haven't tried this in perhaps a year.

 * rewind from pkgsrc.  Better than wine when I tried it, but
   ultimately suffers the same problems as peace/wine.

   Haven't tried this in perhaps a year.

 * twin from pkgsrc.  Same problems as peace/wine/rewind, though I think
   that it also provides CPU emulation.

   Haven't tried this in perhaps a year.

The last time that I tried any ofthe last 4, they could not run
the standard(?) installer software for shrinkwrapped applications.
This made it impossible for me to do anything practical with them.


If I could sort out the problems I'm having with Bochs, that's the
front-runner at the moment.  It might also help if there was a way
to test the performance of bochs with a fairly minimal setup; but
bochs does not (that I can see) report its approximate speed.

If that doesn't pan out, I'm leaning towards either living with the
PII swapping or else taking NetBSD off of the Athlon (with all due
tears shed).

Thoughts?  Opinions?  Jeers?


-- 
  "I probably don't know what I'm talking about."  http://www.olib.org/~rkr/